


brazen wing'd beast

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-01
Updated: 2009-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon put down the candle and stood slowly, turning softly. His odd visitor was standing in the gloom near the back of the room, out of the golden circle of candlelight. His appearance was that of a young man. There was clay in the fine hair of his lashes and brows, and Brendon became aware of the scent of loam and earthly decay, and felt his face change.</p>Late Victorian fin de siecle spiritualist AU, loosely based on A. S. Byatt's The Conjugial Angel.
            </blockquote>





	brazen wing'd beast

The gaslight drew him moth-like through the fog; a lighthouse signalling safe harbour, flashing in and out of sight as hansom cabs and carriages went past. Brendon stood on the other side of the street, uncertain, hesitating to cross but equally unable to move forward.

He’d gone last week, half-sick and half-excited, and it had been wonderful and terrible and strangely ordinary. Miss Salpeter’s parlour was small and cluttered and full of bric-a-brac, like a thousand parlours in a dozen cities, all antimacassars and bright water colours. The people had been different, a strange motley collection sitting in a crowded circle of chairs and hassocks, waiting for the spirits to come to them. Many of them looked ordinary enough, but not all.

There had been a stout gentleman in late middle age, of good colour, beard and well-brushed brown hair glinting with chestnut and gold. His eyes had been a very bright blue, not in the least faded, and he'd fumbled in his pocket for a round-faced pocket watch chased in gold, and sat there for the entirety of the seance with one finger drawing circles on its surface. Brendon could have passed him on the street or met him in the 'Change, and not remarked upon his appearance in the least. There had been a woman with red hair dressed a la mode, her delicate fingers worrying at the tip of one lacy glove, and her, too, he could have met anywhere and not thought anything of it. Others, more unsettling; a pale man with skin that looked like it had never seen the sun, and dark black hair in tangles that looked as though it had never been washed, with huge dark eyes and too many small teeth. A small swarthy man with hair falling over his forehead in Byronic fashion, dressed like an aesthete, but his expression too tight and eyes too fierce ever to pass as one of that louche set.

Greta had turned down the lamps before Brendon could stare at the others any longer, trying to decide which of them were here desperately hoping to hear from beyond, and which were here because they could do – _it_. The dying light had caught on her golden curls and the locket at her throat, and then they’d waited, and Brendon had felt _it,_ felt it move through him, stronger than he’d ever known it when it was just him alone.

“The pen, the pen,” the man with the fierce eyes had hissed, and Brendon’s fingers had closed around the barrel. The words had formed black upon the paper without any conscious will of his own.

He could feel the urge tonight, pressing at his skin like the damp breath of the fog, and the bright star of streetlight near Miss Salpeter’s shone through the evening. He took a deep breath and turned sharply to the left, ignoring the pull in the other direction.

-

Brendon was sitting at his dressing table, loosening his cravat, when he heard the sigh behind him. He could make out nothing in the glass.

“Show yourself,” Brendon said, and his voice trembled only slightly.

“I do not think you would like to see me." The voice was dry and distant, like something drawing its breath with difficulty, the echo of an echo.

“I am an open-minded man,” Brendon said. “I do not think like or dislike things, until and unless they prove themselves disagreeable.”

“I think I should prove disagreeable,” his visitor said regretfully.

Brendon reached for the candleholder and lifted it up to the glass. The small bright flame flickered and guttered, although the windows were fastened; his landlady thought the night air unhealthy.

"That won't help. You can look, if you like."

Brendon put down the candle and stood slowly, turning softly. His odd visitor was standing in the gloom near the back of the room, out of the golden circle of candlelight. His appearance was that of a young man.

"You see," his visitor said, stepping closer. His eyes were sunk deep, their sockets cleanly carved like those on the statue of a medieval king. Soft brown curls clustered around his ears and brow. His clothes were cut in a style abandoned not long before Brendon was born, too tight in the breeches and high-cut in the coat, and there was a familiar pocket watch clipped to his waistcoat. He was thin, very thin.

There was clay in the fine hair of his lashes and brows, and Brendon became aware of the scent of loam and earthly decay, and felt his face change.

“Yes, I am quite dead,” his visitor said, his lips drawing tight. Brendon wasn't sure whether it was a grimace or an attempt at a smile. It wasn't the first time Brendon had seen the dead, but this was the clearest and closest he'd ever seen one. Most were only a whisper, a shadow, a sketch of form; this young man was almost realised, although he shivered under his heavy clothes in a way not quite natural, as though he was struggling to hold his form together through an act of will.

"I’m sorry," Brendon said. "What can I do to help you?"

There was a long pause. "I don't know," the young man said, finally. "I can't remember. I'm very cold," he added, his voice small and lost. "I can’t remember what it was like to be warm."

“Come here,” Brendon said. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall open as though he had always known the right thing to do, and the young man came towards him like he was drawn forward by some strange magnetic fluid. His eyes were very dark and unsure. “Come,” Brendon repeated, and when he drew close, he pulled the young man to his chest.

He was much less substantial than a person; not that Brendon had ever dared to hold another breathing man in his arms. The graveclothes were shockingly stiff and rough against his bare skin.

His visitor shook in the circle of his arms. "I’m so cold," he whispered again. His breath was faintly sweet with corruption.

"I'm sorry," Brendon repeated. He didn’t dare hold him tighter, in case he crushed him into ash. Instead, he began to hum, low in his throat, a music-hall tune; somewhere his father might consider even more deleterious for his immortal soul than Miss Salpeter’s parlour on a Tuesday evening. It was perhaps his imagination, but the shivering seemed to lessen.

"I can feel the sound in your chest," his visitor said wonderingly. "Can you sing it properly?”

"Where many a stormy wind shall blow 'ere Jack comes home again,” Brendon finished softly. "Then here's to the sailor, and here's to the soldier, too; hearts will beat for him, upon the waters blue...”

"And I can feel your heart beating," the young man said, "like a little bird in a cage of bone." He breathed in, and the faintest colour came into his cheeks.

“Why are you here?" Brendon asked. "Can you remember?"

"I came - they couldn’t hear me tonight, I couldn’t get through." His visitor took another breath. Brendon felt the shift of ancient linen, but nothing of flesh or pulse. "I’ve managed it a few times, before, but never for long; never for long enough. You came, and you were so strong, and I thought I could get through, but others were there ahead of me. And this week you didn’t come at all, and _I have so much to say_.”

His voice broke, and Brendon felt him lose form, briefly, coalesce again, the shaking stronger than before. He thought of the gentleman with the watch, waiting in the circle of chairs, and tried to help him. "To Mr Smith?"

"You know him!"

"Only a very little," Brendon said, straining to remember. "He’s married, I believe; he has two sons, Ryan and George. One, I fear, is a sad disappointment to him."

"His elder son, I have no doubt," said his visitor, and gave a queer sort of cough that sounded painfully dry. Brendon laughed, too, the bitterness in it surprising him.

“We are all a disappointment to our fathers.”

“Or they to us." He shook again. "I can't hold. I have to tell him - I'm too far away, I can't hold. Will you come next week?"

"Yes," Brendon said, "yes, _of course_ ," and the young man smiled at him. He was beautiful still, Brendon thought, and then he held only air.


End file.
